years

Columbus introduced the pineapple to Europe in 1496. 200 years later the English went crazy

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When the gun is drawn it is to shoot, the one who takes it out to show it is a parguela. That always made me more amused than necessary. phrase of one of Callejeros’ ‘caughts’ on public roads, and I always associated it with what we buy for status. If we are what we have, we show what we have to demonstrate our position. And in 17th century England, what the richest people took out for a walk to show off their power was… a pineapple. The Blackberry phones back in the dayto the just like watchesjewelry, cars or yachts, are status symbols. They are elements that we use to show the social level in which we find ourselves. Up to a Labubu would go into this example, and if these symbols have something in common, it is that they are expensive. In the case of the pineapple, the fruit was introduced to Europe in 1496 with a single specimen of a pineapple. And this exotic fruit did not hit hard in Spain, but in an England that experienced a real “piñamania”. From the pineapple fever… It was on his second transatlantic voyage when the explorer in the service of the Spanish crown returned with the pineapple. In the Guadeloupe island He found the fruit and took back to Spain a large quantity of this “pina de Indes”, or fruit of the “pine of the Indians”. He offered it to the Catholic Monarchs and it seems that… they liked it. So much so that, according to the historian Peter Martyr d’Anghierathe king “preferred it over everything else.” It was what was needed for the subjects will embrace the fruit with open arms. It is a mystery how and when pineapple was introduced to England, but it is believed that, in the mid-17th century, Charles II of England held a feast at which pineapple was the exotic dish. And more important than its flavor, was that the pineapple, being unknown in the Old Continent, was not associated with any cultural reference. If the apple was the forbidden fruit, the pineapple was a blank canvas. In an article by BBC We can read how Lauren O’Hagan, from the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University, explains that this allowed the pineapple to be given a mythical quality: it was the symbolic manifestation of the divine right of the king. There it is nothing, but it is still easy to identify thanks to the “crown” of the pineapple and the golden color of the exterior and, above all, the interior. This earned him the nickname “King Pine,” and the royals wasted no time in doing what they did best: turning something unattainable to the people into something more than separated them from the plebs. King Charles II commissioned a portrait of himself being entertained with a pineapple, the ornamentation of palaces and mansions began to adopt the pineapple as a structural ornament. Drawings, tapestries, more paintings, tableware, furniture ornamentation, medals and… this: Dunmore Pineapple It was exotic, but there was also an interest in starting to cultivate it in Europe, and that was possible in the mid-17th century. Heated greenhouses They allowed us to replicate the tropical climate (more or less) to start growing pineapples. And you would think that the more pineapples on the market, the lower their value will be, right? Well, the opposite happened. Since these greenhouses were very expensive, and growing the first pineapples was not an easy task, the fruit was seen as a investment. It took years to flower in a very expensive facility and, furthermore, it was possible that a large part of the harvest was lost for different reasons. There were more, yes, but since the upper classes were the only ones who could afford a pineapple and were aware of its value… they were not going to eat it. And thus began the climax of this story: pineapple rental. The wealthiest, who could spend 80 pounds on one (tight to inflation, between 12,000 and 16,000 pounds), they were not going to eat a piece of fruit worth 20,000 euros, so they used it as ornamentation. Since they last several days without going overboard, they organized events in which they had the pine cones as if they were vases (or LEGO figures), clearly visible to the guests. When it started to get soft, they ate it. And what did those who had money, but couldn’t afford a pineapple, do? Rent it. This is how a parallel business emerged. to satisfy that demand. Shark mentality of those businessmen who thought about the business of renting pineapples to the wealthy classes, but not much. It was considered shameful to be caught leaving a pineapple rental store (it would be admitting social defeat), and the absurdity reached limits like seeing people walking around holding a pineapple. The equivalent of going out into the street with a ‘Luisvi‘ bragging about ‘Luisvi’. But soon the gentrifiers’ worst nightmare would occur: globalization. …to the democratization of the pineapple The progress In transportation, with steamships that began to make more frequent trips between Great Britain and the colonies where pineapples grew wild, pineapples began to be stored in warehouses, along with other goods. Soon, the pineapple invaded the market, and if before only the upper classes could afford a pineapple, now the working class could also delight in its flavor. O’Hagan recounts that “at the time, the pineapple-eating working class was used as a visual metaphor for the problem of progress in satirical prints.” If everyone could eat pineapple, It wasn’t special anymore.. Suddenly, the image of pineapple as a prohibitive fruit fell away, like “I liked Nirvana before it became mainstream.” They were sold in carts on the streets, even cheaper than potatoes, and when a way was devised to fit a pineapple in a can, the fruit definitively lost its appeal for the wealthiest. There was only one thing left to remember that glorious past: art, tableware … Read more

We’ve been telling ourselves for 100 years that breakfast is the “most important meal of the day.” The problem is that it is not true

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They’ve been hammering us with that slogan for so long that it should be true. That is, if from different speakers they proclaim that under no circumstances should we skip breakfast, it will be because it is lunch. most important of the day. But how we already pointed herethe studies on which they have relied to affirm this are conclusive. It also does not seem true that it is good to have breakfast to “start the day with energy”, nor that it reduces our appetite throughout the day. So who and why started proclaiming it? The history of breakfast is like many other social uses, something that has more to do with the roots of the context from which it came than with an innate need of our body to practice it. Several things came together between the 19th and 20th centuries so that breakfast became established as just another meal in Western societies. The first, the change of production model. Before, workers, mostly rural and dedicated to work in the fields, ate breakfast quickly whatever was out therelike last night’s leftovers. It wasn’t so much a meal as it was an appetizer. With the arrival of cities and the industrial revolution, work schedules were established. The workers, who spent the entire day working, saw the benefit of eating something before going to work. From 1822 onwards And here things started to get interesting. Progressively, the more money American workers were able to earn, they ate more meat. It was the star product to eat in the morning. They could prepare a meatloaf, a chicken or beef dish in the same way they would at lunch or dinner time. And all of this cooked with butter. The dyspepsia or indigestion became a public health problem on the level that obesity is now. The people of North America ate poorly, foods that were too heavy and altered their intestinal flow. People who needed to eat very well to go to work. The 19th century was also the time when western doctors They began to worry about nutritional health, germs and, later, vitamins. Thus, while the newspapers and magazines harshly criticized the problems caused by dyspepsiathe industry and the market naturally looked for a substitute. There came muesli and cereals, then minimally processed flour or corn that in many cases had to be soaked before consumption. The initial flavor and appearance of the cereals was that of military porridgebut they were attractive to a large part of the consumers: it seemed like a “health” productnot like those red meats that prevented good circulation. Furthermore, it was a food that I didn’t need to be preparedas easy as putting them together with a little milk so you can swallow them and go to work. Replacing big meals in the morning with a light product The health of the population improved, which is why many doctors and cereal merchants used this slogan to expand their consumption: breakfast is the most important meal of the dayand that is why you should take care of yourself early in the morning. Is practically the same idea of ​​health that whole grain houses continue to sell us so that we can lose weight. Corn flakes arrive Breakfast then began to be seen as the solution to all the problems. For the little ones, without a good breakfast they would not be able to reach their maximum level of effort at school. Also alcoholism It was caused by lack of food in the morning. According to certain prestigious doctors of the period, morning hunger encouraged the employee to begin to abuse the bottle until he became dependent on it. Some vendors went even further and talked about how their cereals They could cure malaria and appendicitis. Already then the cereal was promoted as “organic” foodAs we see today, some products are sold more expensive and not necessarily with better nutritional results. But the beneficial halo of the cereal remained and extended to the breakfast ritual, whether it was processed wheat, fruits or other foods. breakfast had come to stay. From the 19th and 20th centuries we move to the 21st century, when the saying, never sufficiently proven by science, has already been established as an immovable truth. Cereals have long been no longer tasteless porridge but small ones processed sugar balls in boxes with smiling animals that bill billions of dollars a year. And there is another agent that, for years, has been interested in making sure you remember that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” and, therefore, eat quite well: fast food chains. Some essays have pointed out how the marketing of companies like McDonalds or Starbucks is being much more aggressive in morning products such as McMuffins or cheesecakes than in foods at lunch or dinner time. According to them, the new big dispute is here. While many workers have already decided on their meal locations, there is an increase in people who is going to breakfast at chains outside the house. And how mornings are the time for routinehumans tend to choose one place or another to have our breakfast and not leave the pattern except in case of emergency. If McDonalds gets you to go to their establishment in the morning, in a way you are marrying them gastronomically. And, well, you know, it’s the first meal, so it’s okay if it’s a little excessive, you’ll burn it off throughout the day (this, as we already explained, it is not completely contrasted). Thus, from a creditable beginning in which citizens’ nutrition was improved, we have moved to a point where the industry has been adapting to our tastes and modifying our diet to the point of harming us all. Although, if we think about it, the phrase is still as true now as it was 300 years ago: “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” It is the most important. And the most discussed. In Xataka | We knew … Read more

China has been building the Great Green Wall for 50 years. What I had not planned was to alter the rains

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The China’s forests are growing. It has nothing to do with a natural process, but with a meticulously followed strategy to contain the desert expansion and reforest the country with billions of trees. The consequence of this reforestation is not limited to having more trees and two studies have just shown the counterpart of massive ecological engineering. This is not good news: the continental hydrological cycle is being altered. The Green Wall. Of China’s deserts, the Gobi may be the best known, but the Taklamakan It is one of the most problematic. 85% of this 337,600 km² desert are dunes, which at certain times of the year generates sand storms that leave the surrounding towns without crops. And countries like the two Koreas or Japan too they suffered the effects of storms. Furthermore, it was growing, so in 1978, the country launched march the Refugio Tres Norte Forest Program. The strategy: a series of tree belts to contain the expansion of its largest deserts. The objective: to go from forest cover in the country of 5.05% in 1997 to almost 15%, and the idea is complete that belt by 2050 with a total of 4,500 kilometers long. At the moment, the Great Green Wall has completed the shield around Taklamakan with a belt of about 3,000 km, observing a decrease in sandstorms. Consequences in water. Apart from that desert, in others such as Ulanbuh, Korqin, Hunshandake, Maowusu and Kubuqi, tens of thousands of square kilometers of forest and pasture have been built. And, although the storms have decreased, different investigations are noticing a secondary effect: an alteration of the water cycle throughout the continent. Published in Earth’s Future, a study carried out by Chinese researchers shows how new vegetation has increased evapotranspiration in the region. Bottom line: More water is being pumped from the ground into the atmosphere, meaning winds are transporting water to regions like the Tibetan Plateau as rain while the monsoon regions of the northwest and east are suffering a decrease in its net water availability. Non-uniform redistribution. This greater green cover causes restored forests and grasslands to transpire more water than bare soil or traditional crops. This additional moisture It enters the atmosphere, which falls in other regions as rain. According to the study, the consequences at the national level were the following: Evapotranspiration increased by 1.71 mm/year. Precipitation also increased by 1.24 mm/year. Water availability (from aquifers and springs, for example) decreased by 0.46 mm/year. And, as we say, the process is not uniform because the water is moving from one area to another. Greening/conserving water. It is not the only study published on the subject, but it is one that coincides in time with another published in August of this year in which, after analyzing 1,046 hydrological stations and their data from the last 60 years, they discovered that the flow of the rivers decreased by more than 70%. Their conclusion is that it is not an effect of climate change, but of changes in the landscape caused by human intervention. It makes perfect sense: trees need water to grow, and that amount of new trees makes them act like a giant pump, reducing the amount of water that feeds the rivers. Thus, there is a tension between greening China and conserving its water, since once in the clouds, it precipitates air currents wherever you go. Implications. In the end, the researchers conclude that the strategy when managing water must be changed and that hydrographic plans must take into account both the land basins and the “air basin”, anticipating where the water evaporated by the forests will travel. Because the ambitious reforestation plan has 24 years left and the country has invested a lot in it directly – by planting trees – but also with policies that prohibit the felling of forests or with incentives for farmers to convert their croplands into pastures. And, well, the consequences not only have to do with water. That the Natural Forest Protection Program prohibited logging in primary forests provoked that Chinese loggers would ‘loot’ the Burmese forests. Something that adds to the conflict between both nations. Images | Siggy Nowak, Janwillemvanaalst, Kanenori In Xataka | In China they already have room for the first city with a vertical forest: a million plants and trees

30 years ago a young Chinese man set up an ice cream stand. Now he leads an emporium with more stores than McDonald’s

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It’s hard to believe in a world dominated by big brands and multinationals, but there is a hospitality chain with more stores than McDonald’s and Starbucks that you’ve probably never heard of. His name is Mixue (Mìxuě Bīngchéng) was founded in the late 90s by a university student from Zhenghou, China, and today it is considered the largest food and beverage chain in the world. This is how it is recognized, for example, by the magazine TIMEwhich has included it in your listing of the 100 most influential companies of 2025. It is estimated that it has more than 46,000 stores spread throughout Asia, Australia, the Middle East and South America, a vast network of stores offering a menu based on ice creams, smoothies, coffees, traditional teas and bubble teas. Bigger than McDonald’s? Yes, if we talk about the number of establishments. The benefits already they are something else. While McDonald’s boasts of having more than 43,000 restaurants spread across more than a hundred countries and Starbucks managed 40,576 stores At the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, Mixue surpasses (and quite comfortably) both figures. A few months ago the magazine TIME assured that the chain has more than 45,000 spread mainly throughout mainland China, although it also operates in other regions. Do you have so many stores? Yeah. Fortune calculate which exceeds 46,000 points of sale throughout Asia, Austria, the Middle East and South America. Other sources speak of more storesraising the total network to 53,000 points selling. Beyond these dancing numbers, one thing is clear: Mixue is normally considered the food and beverage chain with a greater deployment of establishments in the world. In addition, its branch network continues to expand to good If in the West its brand is less known to us than McDonald’s or Starbucks, it is because (despite the international jump that has given in recent years) most of the Mixue stores they remain focused in China. The firm also has another handicap that helps understand its global expansion: while in the case of Starbucks more than 50% of the stores are in the hands of the company itself, in Mixue practically all They operate through franchises. What is your story? Mixue’s is the typical story of improvement and accelerated growth that gives shine to the classes of coaching business. The father of the company is Zhang Hongchao, who laid its foundation almost 30 years ago from scratch. Your story starts in 1997in Zhengzhou, when Zhang, then a university student, managed to get his grandmother to lend him 3,000 yuan ($420) to set up a small slushie and soft drink stand. Despite the challenges that were encountered along the way (and some other business failure), Zhang moved forward, managed to adapt to the changes in Zhenghou, reinvested in machinery and found the key to creating a million-dollar business. Sam Tang account that his first success came in 2006, when he launched ice creams for one yuan. In 2014, its brand already had 1,000 stores. In 2020 there were 10,000. And how has it succeeded? The big question. Mixue’s business model has several clear characteristics. The first, its commercial approach. The chain basically sells ice cream. soft servesmoothies, tea drinks and bubble teasalthough in your menu coffee and Fortune assures which in the future plans to expand its offering with beer. The other great features of your menu are the affordable priceswith ice creams for less than one euro. Other peculiarities of the company are its commitment to dominate the supply chainits commitment to a clearly identifiable brand thanks to symbols such as its mascot (Snow King) and, above all, an expansion through franchises. In a report from a few months ago the company itself recognizes that almost all of its stores (99%) are opened and operate through franchises. Mixue is responsible for supervising businesses, choosing locations, decoration and assessing the capacity of the staff. For her, the business is not so much in the fee that those stores then pay as in the equipment, merchandise and packaging that she sells to them. And the future? It doesn’t look bad. In spring the company went public in Hong Kong and managed to raise nearly 450 million of dollars, starring in one of its best premieres of the first half of 2025. The company seems willing also to get into the powerful (and disputed) US market. According to precise Fortuneduring the first half of the year the company reached a revenue volume of 2,000 million dollars (40% more than in 2024) with profits of 370 million. Despite its humble origins, its founder and his brother now manage a fortune of billions of dollars. Images | Choo Yut Shing (Flickr) 1 and 2 and Jeremy Thompson (Flickr) In Xataka | One of the biggest wine critics is French and has toured China. There is no good news for French wine

20 years after Dolly we still haven’t cloned humans, but stopping aging is feasible: Crossover 1×32

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In the summer of 1996, a Scottish laboratory made a breakthrough that would forever alter our understanding of genetics and ignite intense debates about the ethics and the possibilities of cloning. That day Dolly was bornthe first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell. This milestone, achieved by researchers at the Roslin Institute, opened a new era in genetic engineering and shattered the belief that only embryonic cells possess the potential for the complete development of a new individual. Since then there has been debate about the possibility of cloning human beings, but we have not done it and it does not seem that we will ever do it. Serezade, molecular biologist, researcher and scientific communicator, talks to us about that and many other things this week. But we also discussed with her another fascinating topic: how the latest advances seem to be achieving something long sought after: slow aging. There is a lot of fabric to cut here, and for example the environment, culture and habits shape our DNA. But there are also risks, ethics and genetic privacy intertwined. And all this raises a key question: does it make sense to be immortal? On YouTube | Crossover In Xataka | The promise of 120 years is dismantled: biology sets a life ceiling that is quite difficult to break

For years, TV ads have been louder without violating any laws. Spain has decided that this is over

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A common experience among millions of viewers: you are watching your favorite series at a comfortable volume when an advertising block bursts in, forcing you to rush headlong towards the remote control. This calculated shock could have its days numbered in Spain thanks to quantifiable technical criteria to monitor the sound level of advertisements. The law. The National Markets and Competition Commission has established for the first time a series of criteria so that the sound level of the advertising blocks does not exceed that of the programs, according to the agreement INF/DTSA/083/25 published on November 20, 2025. The regulations extend the regulation that from summer 2025 DTT governs the entire audiovisual ecosystem: video streaming platforms such as YouTube and on-demand services, music applications such as Spotify, pay television and conventional and digital radio stations. The regulator warns that non-compliance constitutes a minor infraction with penalties that can reach 200,000 euros in serious cases. The technical deception: dB vs. LUFS. The advertising industry has for decades exploited a fissure in the traditional measurement of sound. Conventional decibels record the electrical amplitude of the signal, but ignore a crucial factor: how the human brain processes that sound information. Two recordings may register identical values ​​on a traditional peak meter, and yet one is perceived as noticeably louder than the other. The secret is in the frequency composition. Our auditory system responds unevenly depending on the pitch: mid frequencies (especially between 1 and 4 kHz, where the human voice is concentrated) are much more audible to us than deep bass or extreme treble. This physiological characteristic allows advertisers to create messages that sound louder without violating technical decibel limits. The birth of the LUFS. The solution came when the International Telecommunication Union published the ITU-R BS.1770 standardadopted in August 2010 by the European Broadcasting Union. This system introduces the LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale), which integrate a weighting filter K that mathematically replicates the sensitivity of the ear. The result: a measurement that reflects actual perception, not just electrical power. Spain aligns itself with Europe. He Royal Decree 250/2025approved in March, established for the first time an objective parameter for Spanish DTT: -23.0 LUFS with a tolerance of ±1.0 LU (Loudness Unit). This figure is not arbitrary, but coincides exactly with the normalized value that the European Broadcasting Union has been recommending since 2010. The CNMC has now taken the next step and has extended these criteria beyond traditional television. Implementation. The Spanish regulator has opted for a gradual approach. The CNMC does not require platforms to reencode millions of hours of historical content immediately. The document allows operators to adopt “technical criteria that offer an equivalent level of protection”, a flexible formula that recognizes the characteristics of each medium. But implementation faces complex obstacles. While traditional television networks control every second of broadcast from a production room, the streaming It works with distributed architectures where advertising is dynamically inserted through programmatic systems. YouTube, for example, hosts content generated by millions of users with disparate equipment, from professional studios to smartphones. Technically monitoring each ad inserted in real time in this tangle becomes a considerable logistical challenge. Photo of Vadim Babenko in Unsplash / Elyas Pasban in Unsplash

We thought we “discovered” fire 50,000 years ago. We didn’t know how wrong we were.

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For decades paleontology has maintained a clear distinction in history: it is one thing to use fire and quite another to create it at will. Something that seems very silly, but is essential since until now the evidence we had on the table pointed to the ability to light a bonfire from scratch They dated back 50,000 years. But this has changed. A big change. A published study in Nature He told us that we were quite wrong about this. A team of researchers has pointed out that hominids already possessed technology to make fire voluntarily 415,000 years ago. That is, 375,000 years earlier than we thought. Although what is surprising is that it was not even our species, but the early Neanderthals. Something that has been known after studying a site found in Barnham in England that has given the necessary evidence to reach the end of the matter. How do we know? At the moment we do not have a time machine to travel to the past and see what happened in our history. That is why this discovery makes it surprising that they used reverse engineering to reach this conclusion. The elements that were available at the site were not just ashes, but the “ignition kit.” Researchers were able to identify fragments of pyrite and flint axes, which can be used to make fire. Although the key here is that the pyrite It is not native to that area, but hominids had to intentionally transport it to make fire voluntarily. The mechanism is, in essence, the prehistoric version of a modern lighter: striking the pyrite with the flint generates sparks capable of igniting dry tinder. Confirming it. With these indications, anyone could think that it could be a random fire, and that is why advanced techniques such as archeomagnetism, micromorphology and spectroscopy were used. In this case, the results indicated that the sediments had been heated to more than 700 ºC, which suggests that it was a concentrated and fed fire. This is also added to the fact that the flint axes presented specific cracks caused by cycles of heat and cooling, indicating that fires were made repeatedly. A big jump. The importance of this discovery is monumental since until now we assumed that complete control of fire was a late skill. This discovery sets the controlled ignition clock back by 375,000 years compared to previous evidence from French sites. This tells us that the minds of early Neanderthals, who were most likely found in that area, were more developed than thought. In this way, transporting pyrite implies long-term planning, which is not an instinctive reaction to the cold, evidencing a cognitive ability to think about the future. The domain of fire. Making fire at will is considered a great evolutionary advance since fire can lengthen the day for nighttime socialization or even cook food to obtain more energy with less digestive effort. This also represents a great geographical expansion for the species, since 400,000 years ago Europe was going through a very important glacial period, which made the heat of fire essential for the species to perpetuate itself. Images | Mladen Borisov In Xataka | Neither lions nor hyenas: at the top of the food chain 30 million years ago, there was a “pig” weighing more than a thousand kilos

We have been fascinated for years by the geniuses who come up with revolutionary innovations out of thin air. It’s always been smoke

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We live in times in which innovation, creative genius and the search for the next technological revolution are everything. We all want to know who it is the next Mark Zuckerberg, the next Steve Jobs either the next Albert Einstein. So much so that we project our way of looking at the world onto the past and, from time to time, texts appear that talk about the past. great forgotten geniuses to whom history did not do justice. But the truth is that most of the time, those great geniuses are rightly forgotten. Contrary to what we usually think, inventors usually do not exist. At least, if they are not lucky people. Smoke (or vapor) sellers Perhaps the best example is the steam engine. Which, in fact, must be one of the machines that has been invented the most times in History. The usual version is that the steam engine was developed and perfected in England between the end of the 17th century and the end of the 18th century. And that, on the other hand and always according to this version, was the engine of the industrial revolution. It’s not exact. Although archaeologists could surely give us previous examples, the aeolipilethe first “steam engine”, was invented by Heron of Alexandria in the first century after Christ. At first, and for many years, it had a recreational purpose (it is a sphere filled with water that, when heated, rotates). The first steam engine. But Heron too created automatic doors and hydraulic fountains which allow us to affirm, without risking too much, that Roman scientists had more than enough capacity to design Thomas Savery’s steam engine without messing up. Later, a century before, according to modern historiography, Mr. Savery invented the first steam engine, Jerónimo de Ayanz, a native of Navarra, also designed an incipient steam engine. Even before that we can find works by Florence Rivault, Taqui ad-Din or Giovanni Branca in which the steam engine was there, within reach. Windmills, mops and table football The same thing happens with water mills. Traditionally, it was considered that this type of mills had been discovered in the Middle Ages because it is the historical period from which we have material remains. But it’s not true. In ancient times, hydraulic mills were known, and very well. In fact, It is known that they also began to expand throughout the 1st century AD. And so on ad nauseum. The question is clear: no, the mop It was not invented in Spain, nor the lollipopsneither the table football. As evidently, and strictly speaking, neither the Spanish nor the Vikings ‘discovered‘America. A few days ago we discussed here in Xataka who was the “creator” of injectable insulin (Nicholas Paulescu either McLeod, Banting and Best?) in a reissue of the famous paradox of “if a tree falls in the middle of the forest and no one hears it, Has it made noise? Has it even fallen?” A key lesson we can draw from this is that, well, inventing something, discovering something, or developing genius is of no use. For hundreds of years we knew how to use water to produce physical work, but it wasn’t until the implosion of the slave system that mills really became popular. For fifteen hundred years we knew everything there was to know to create a steam engine. In fact, wealthy children had small miniature engines. It was not until the specific needs of British mining introduced Savery’s gadget that the steam engine set out to change the world. You don’t get here from nowhere. (Unsplash) Mops and tiled floors, lollipops and the decrease in infant mortality, table football and the incipient improvement in the quality of life of the working classes. Victor Hugo said that “there is nothing more powerful in the world than an idea whose time has come.” And he had to be right because “without their moment”, ideas are nothing. Technology, society and vice versa The cult of innovation, creative genius and disruptive inventions is one of those characteristics of our time that permeates everything. But, in general, innovations are only of degree. Also in the world of technology where we can almost always find a proof of concept that, twenty years before, already advanced the next revolution in the sector. Basically, as we examine technological history, we realize that seeing the world as a succession of great geniuses is very attractive, but not very realistic. Undoubtedly, there are people who advance the knowledge or technology of their time by decades, but if we want to get a real picture of how innovation has worked over the centuries, the strategy is different: think of history as a very long conversation full of opportunities, misunderstandings and moments of genius. There is no need to make it more attractive. Image | Md Mahdi In Xataka | One company has made the biggest breakthrough in toilet paper in 100 years. And its sales are skyrocketing In Xataka | We have a long-term problem with concrete. That’s why someone has come up with staple bricks that don’t need it.

Elon Musk has been refusing to take SpaceX public for 20 years. His new obsession has changed his mind

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If there is something that Elon Musk has been repeating since before Starship was called Starship, it is that SpaceX would not go public until the gigantic Martian rocket was flying regularly. The excuse was that Wall Street likes short-term profitability plans more than multi-generational plans to colonize Mars. But the script has changed: SpaceX is preparing its jump onto the stock market, and not to pay for the trip to the red planet. He does this because he needs a lot of capital for “something more” than Starship and Starlink. The largest IPO in the United States. As revealed BloombergSpaceX plans to launch a Public Offering in late 2026 or early 2027. The company is seeking a valuation of $1.5 trillion (trillion, on an American scale) and more than $30 billion in cash, dizzying figures that would be the largest IPO in the history of the United States, close to the global record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Musk has been leaving breadcrumbs in X for days about this change in strategy. When the first rumors leaked about a financing round that valued the company at 800,000 million, the tycoon denied itclarifying that “the valuation increases are based on the progress of Starship, Starlink… and one more thing, which is possibly the most significant by far.” What is that thing that makes another round of investment insufficient? Orbital computing. What is clear from Musk’s latest tweets is that SpaceX wants to raise a lot of cash with its IPO for more than just Starship and Starlink: to develop space data centers. The logic, that Musk himself considers validis the same one that other companies like Google are following, but with the advantage of being the largest rocket launcher in the world. On Earth, AI data centers have two major bottlenecks: power and cooling. In space, satellites can receive sunlight 24 hours a day without atmospheric interference and with the possibility of dissipating heat on the dark side of the satellite, eliminating complex water systems and air conditioning of the Earth. Beyond Starlink. SpaceX already has a constellation of 9,000 satellites in orbit, many of them interconnected by laser links. The plan would be to take advantage of all the knowledge and technology that the company has to create a new constellation of localized AI: in Musk’s words, the cheapest way to generate AI bitstreams in less than three years. Their roadmap is hard science fiction: scale up to adding 100 GW of capacity per year using high-bandwidth lasers connected to the Starlink constellation itselfwhich is already highly profitable. And from there we move on to factories on the Moon and the use of electromagnetic rails to launch these AI satellites without the need for rockets. The umpteenth gold rush. Figures like Sam Altman, Eric Schmidt either Jeff Bezos They are already moving to have their piece of the pie in the orbital data center business. Google created the Suncatcher project and Nvidia collaborates with Starcloudwhile smaller startups like Aetherflux have announced projects like “Galactic Brain” planned for 2027. The difference is that SpaceX has the launch experience and is building the largest rocket in the world, with the peculiarity that it aspires to be completely reusable. It’s just the beginning. If 1.5 trillion is already a historic valuation, a recent report by ARK Invest projects that by 2030, SpaceX’s enterprise value could be around $2.5 trillion in a base case scenario, driven almost entirely by recurring revenue from Starlink and declining launch costs thanks to Starship reusability. Going public in 2026 would not just be a financial operation: it would give SpaceX the capital it needs to become the backbone of AI computing infrastructure, turning an internet service like Starlink into something that Musk himself considers “much more significant.” Images | SpaceX In Xataka | Building data centers in space was the new hot business. Elon Musk just broke it with a tweet

Jeff Bezos fired the CEO of Blue Origin two years ago. In retrospect, it was the best decision he could have made.

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The most surprising fact about Blue Origin is that it was founded before SpaceX. Obsessed with space since childhood, Jeff Bezos saw the potential the aerospace industry would have and began selling thousands of Amazon shares to build a rocket company. He founded Blue Origin in 2000, when his net worth was around $6.1 billion. Two years later, a young Elon Musk obsessed with the conquest of Mars invested $100 million (more than half of what he had from the sale of PayPal) in founding SpaceX. Who would suspect that the company that would end up revolutionizing the sector would be that of the eccentric South African businessman and not that of the CEO of Amazon, who multiplied his assets by 30. The sleeping giant The Blue Origin coat of arms For almost two decades, Blue Origin was the butt of jokes in the sector: a company financed with infinite funds that sold 15-minute suborbital trips to millionaires, but when it came time to reach orbit it only produced powerpoints and legal lawsuits to stop its opponents. Blue Origin was aware of its apparent slowness in the face of SpaceX, to the point of deliberately adopting it as its motto. The company’s coat of arms includes two turtles and a Latin phrase that Jeff Bezos has publicly defended with pride: Gradatim Ferociter“step by step, fiercely.” But although projects such as the powerful BE-4 engines and the reusable New Glenn rocket had been in development for years, the reality is that Blue Origin did not step on the accelerator until the end of 2023, when Bezos said enough and caused a CEO change that has been like night and day. The Dave Limp Effect The first stage of the New Glenn rocket returning to the factory A little context. By 2023, under the leadership of Bob Smith, Blue Origin had become a bottleneck for US national security. The new Vulcan rocket from ULA (the company that had a monopoly on government launches until the arrival of SpaceX) depended on Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, which kept falling behind schedule. At the end of that year, Jeff Bezos made the decision to remove Bob Smith and entrust the company to the executive who had led Amazon’s devices division during the creation of Alexa or Kindle: Dave Limp. Today, the engine crisis is more than resolved. Blue Origin has celebrated the delivery of the 30th engine to ULA, which will allow its partner to meet its launch obligations for the Space Force. But it has not been the only thing that Dave Limp has managed to channel as the company’s new CEO. Under old management, Blue Origin operated with a crippling risk aversion. He sought perfection on the first try, which translated into eternal development cycles. Limp arrived with the Amazon system under its arm: Blue Origin went from being an R&D company to becoming a real rocket factory willing to take risks. The internal culture had already begun to improve when, in February 2025, Limp laid off 10% of the workforce. “We grew too fast and lost focus,” he explained. But the effect was immediate: Blue Origin has become a company that is agile in decision-making. Instead of having a single rocket that’s scary to break, they’re a real rocket factory. So when the New Glenn finally took off, crashing on the landing attempt, it was not a single prototype: there were other stages of the rocket already on the production line. From New Glenn to Super New Glenn New Glenn vs Saturn V vs New Glenn 9×4 If anyone had doubts about Limp’s management, the events of this last year have dispelled them. Blue Origin has successfully completed two orbital launches that have completely changed the narrative, and which have soon been overshadowed by the company’s roadmap. He maiden flight of the New Glenn It was a partial success. The rocket reached orbit (and there are few rockets that can say that on the first try), but the first stage disintegrated while trying to land. Far from stopping to investigate the failure for a year, Blue Origin analyzed the data, adjusted the software and moved forward with the second attempt, as SpaceX would have done. In November, the second New Glenn successfully launched NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, two probes that were placed at the L2 Lagrange point awaiting gravitational assistance to travel toward Mars. But even a Martian mission can take a backseat when, against all odds, the first stage of the rocket landed on the Jacklyn maritime platform in the Atlantic Ocean. Blue Origin is only the second company to achieve the propulsive landing of a rocket. For the first time, SpaceX has a real competitor capable of recovering orbital-class boosters. One that uses methane for cleaner and cheaper combustion, and that promises to carry up to 45 tons to low Earth orbit. Shortly after the launch, taking advantage of the momentum of success, Blue Origin announced an improved version of the BE-4 engine and a new variant of the rocket: the New Glenn 9×4, which instead of seven engines in the first stage and two in the second, carries nine and four. In addition to a larger 8.7 meter diameter canopy, to launch larger space stations, telescopes and satellites. What does this mean? That Blue Origin is going for the “Super Heavy” category, in which SpaceX competes with the Falcon Heavy and the gigantic Starship, still in development. This variant of the New Glenn will be able to carry 70 tons to low orbit, which with Starship’s permission surpasses almost everything else on the market and, most importantly, with an architecture that has already flown and landed. To conquer the orbit and the Moon With the New Glenn 9×4 scheduled for 2027, Jeff Bezos and Dave Limp’s attention is now focused on scaling the rocket’s manufacturing and reusability capacity to reach 24 launches per year between now and then. SpaceX continues to play in its own league with 160 launches … Read more

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